It Comes With The Job...
by BrieflyDel
Summary: They don't really talk about the visits you have to make to Azkaban when you're eying the title of Minister of Magic...


When you have your eye on the top job at the Ministry of Magic, there are certain aspects of the job you tend to overlook. Inspecting Azkaban each year is one of them. Yet it must be done each year, and the Minister of Magic is the one who has to do it.

It is not pleasant to spend a day looking at tortured and ruined husks of human beings, even if they _were _allies of the Dark Lord. The only way I manage to make it through the visit is with a large slab of Honeydukes' best chocolate and a copy of the _Daily Prophet, _which I can hide behind while I wait for the dementors to admit me and the warden to arrive. Armed with these, I feel reasonably un-depressed amidst the prisoners and their guards.

I was relieved near to the point of shouting when the warden, a dry old warlock named Hoskins, whispered, "Just one more visit, Mr. Fudge. This way."

"Ah good," I exclaimed, rolling up the paper and sticking it under my arm, for security. "Who is it, then?"

Hoskins wouldn't answer. He opened a barred door, which hummed with dozens of angry locks, and lead me down a hallway toward the High Security Wing. I recalled other visits to this wing: the Lestranges, Antiope Willet, young Barty Crouch...

"Here," wheezed Hoskins as we stopped at a far cell to the right. I peered into the darkness of the cell, anxious to flee the small crowd of dementors floating up and down the corridor. A rank, animal smell pervaded the area, and a wheezing, huffing sound was faintly audible from within. I looked at Hoskins delicately. "You...you don't suppose they're dead, do you?"

Hoskins chuckled grimly. "Not this one, 'e's not. C'mon out here, Sirius! Mister Fudges wants a word with you!"

I recoiled from the bars of the cell as a gaunt, mangy figure appeared at the door.

"Hullo Minister," said Sirius Black calmly.

"G-good day," I stammered, alarmed at his blasé greeting.

His bright, sunken eyes bored into me. "I trust everything is well in London?" He said it with the air of one commenting on the weather, because whoever he was talking to was vastly dimmer and would not understand anything else.

I gulped. "It is, thank you." Why was he not mad, destroyed like the rest? _And why are speaking so civilly to him? You remember what he did--!_

"And Mr. Crouch?"

"Cr-crouch?"

Black eyed me a bit scathingly. "Bartemius Crouch, Minister. I understand he's had some tragedies to rebound from."

"Oh! Oh yes, quite, yes." I laughed, hardly understanding why Black was affecting me so. _He truly must be You-Know-Who's right hand, _I thought; _how else could he be so normal? _Hoskins was watching me with an amused gleam in his eye I found most distressing. Finding myself sweating, I made as if to check the time and said, "I am sorry, Mr. Black, but I, ah, have several engagements I must attend to..."

Black wasn't listening. He was staring hungrily at my arm. Too late I realized my want must be poking out. I swept my hand over to protect my side--

"Are you through with that paper, Minister?" he asked, his voice still flat and calm.

Amazed, I looked down at my shoulder. "This?"

"Yes. I miss the crossword quite a lot. Are you through with it?"

I was transfixed for a moment with wonder, and then reasoned, _Ah, what's the harm? It's only a newspaper, _and handed to him through the bars. I watched his thin, talon-like hand wrap itself around my _Daily Prophet, _and then Black unfolded it and stood there, reading over the front page like he was in his living room on a Tuesday afternoon.

I left him with a shaky "Good day," and hurried along the passage with Hoskins at my side. "Good Lord, man!" I breathed, my heart pounding in my throat, "why did you have to show me that?"

Hoskins shrugged. "Only our most notorious prisoner, sir: thought you might be in'trested in how 'is sentence is getting along."

I shivered, and wiped my forehead with my handkerchief. I was so unstrung by my exchange with Sirius Black I was halfway across the water when I wondered how, with no quill or pen, he would fill a crossword puzzle out.


End file.
